🎥 Sweaty hands? Rakitić slip-up at the Champions League draw

We probably all know the feeling: when an important appointment, a significant conversation, or another essential event is coming up where everything simply has to go smoothly, and beforehand we imagine scenarios of exactly how things shouldn’t go. 

Something like this might have happened to former football star Ivan Rakitić, who was responsible for drawing the small balls from the pots at today’s Champions League round of 16 draw at noon. 

If he had similar thoughts beforehand, one unpleasant scenario was certainly the one that actually occurred: right with the very first draw, he visibly struggled to open the small ball. Even though the handshake with the host still sounded smooth and made that so satisfying clapping noise, his hands already seemed a bit sweatier at that point, because he just couldn’t get the ball open. 

The former Croatian national player tried for about ten seconds, attempting to dry his hands on his jacket. Eventually, the host stepped in to help. 

Ivan Rakitić himself blamed the Foppa cream, which may have made his hands greasy; in the end, he handed the ball to the host, who helped him open it. 

The Champions League winner read out the name of the team, and at that moment it was sealed: Manchester City and Real Madrid will face each other again this year in the Champions League knockout stage—this time already in the round of 16. 

By the way, the difficulty with opening the ball did not repeat itself; for the rest of the draw, luck-bringer Rakitić had no more problems with the balls. 

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.